Together, we will show that we are a truly global and growing force to be reckoned with. As the fossil fuel industry throws more money at fossil fuel expansion, we will turn up the volume of our divestment movement. And we won’t stop until we win.
Join us for Global Divestment Day on February 13 and 14 and together, let’s make fossil fuels history.
Sustainable Labor is down with Alexandra Bradbury from Labor Notes. She suggests that we find innovative ways to lower the cost of living.
“We wouldn’t need to work so hard if the rent (and mortgages) weren’t so damn high. If transit were free, and frequent enough. If we had free health care and higher education.
Sound utopian? It shouldn’t. Take the federal money already going to higher ed in loans and grants, hand it straight to public universities instead—and you could have free tuition for all, tomorrow. Same with health care: single-payer would cost less than we already spend on our dysfunctional private system.”
WE agree. Read the rest of her thoughtful piece at Labor Notes.
“That connection to this place and the love that people have for it, that’s what Arch Coal doesn’t get. They underestimate that. They don’t understand it so they disregard it. And in the end that’s what will save that place. It’s not the hatred of the coal companies, or anger, but love will save this place.”
Alexis Bonogofsky, Montana goat rancher
I used to believe in hatred, that hatred would move me and others to make the changes that we need to in this marvelous world that we inhabit. Honestly, I still hate. It boils inside me sometimes, making me want to strike out at my enemies. Yes, even those who seek love have enemies. The coal companies, the banksters, pocket picking politicians and CEO’s who use the marvels of our scientific imagination against us working people, funding the development of technology that makes workers obsolete and then throwing us away after extracting every ounce of value from our depleted souls, they are my enemies.
But I don’t think such formidable foes can be defeated with mere hatred alone. Our planet is one huge organism, and we are connected. The good bacteria doesn’t hate the bad bacteria. The good,the bad and the ugly are all part of this collective experience and all this has led us to this point in time. Each of us, and all the wonders of creation, are who we must be in this moment–a profound moment it is too, where so many of the products of human imagination have become weapons of mass destruction pointed at us and all life on the planet. Sadness and madness are intertwined within each breath.
But as we know, crisis can be opportunity. It is the struggle that defines us as a species and as individuals. All around the world people are struggling to fend off destruction. In remote villages we stand united. In mass demonstrations in cities we fill the man made canyons with harmonies for justice, all in hopes of securing this place—this tiny blue dot, so insignificant in the universe, but all encompassing for the creatures and life who call it home— for the seven generations. The future has arrived. Can we learn to love?
The proposed Keystone XL pipeline that will run from the tar sands of Alberta Canada to the Gulf of Mexico is a loser for workers and the planet. While it will create some temporary construction jobs, it’s estimated that it will only create thirty-five “permanent” jobs. Between the amount of carbon that will be burned extracting the oil from the tar sands and the fumes from the spent petroleum it is an all around loser for working people’s futures. Let’s hope Obama vetoes the bill that will undoubtedly be passed by neanderthals in Congress . You can read more about it in this piece by Zoe Carpenter in The Nation.